This is an unofficial and oftentimes humorous look at my Region19 Board of Education experience. I will try to stimulate interest and discussion along the way. This is a sandbox of ideas that we'll explore together so feel free to comment.

The Black KKK and Burying Black Boys

Rather than whine about white folks' insensitivity or reserve a special place of sorrow for rich athletes, we'd be better served mustering the kind of outrage and courage it took in the 1950s and 1960s to stop the white KKK from hanging black men from trees.

But we don't want to deal with ourselves. We take great joy in prescribing medicine to cure the hate in other people's hearts. Meanwhile, our self-hatred, on full display for the world to see, remains untreated, undiagnosed and unrepentant.

Our self-hatred has been set to music and reinforced by a pervasive culture that promotes a crab-in-barrel mentality.

You're damn straight I blame hip hop for playing a role in the genocide of American black men. When your leading causes of death and dysfunction are murder, ignorance and incarceration, there's no reason to give a free pass to a culture that celebrates murder, ignorance and incarceration.

Of course there are other catalysts, but until we recapture the minds of black youth, convince them that it's not OK to "super man dat ho" and end any and every dispute by "cocking on your bitch," nothing will change.

Does a Soulja Boy want an education?

HBO did a fascinating documentary on Little Rock Central High School, the Arkansas school that required the National Guard so that nine black kids could attend in the 1950s. Fifty years later, the school is one of the nation's best in terms of funding and educational opportunities. It's 60 percent black and located in a poor black community.

Watch the documentary and ask yourself why nine poor kids in the '50s risked their lives to get a good education and a thousand poor black kids today ignore the opportunity that is served to them on a platter.

Blame drugs, blame Ronald Reagan, blame George Bush, blame it on the rain or whatever. There's only one group of people who can change the rotten, anti-education, pro-violence culture our kids have adopted. We have to do it.

According to reports, Sean Taylor had difficulty breaking free from the unsavory characters he associated with during his youth.

The "keepin' it real" mantra of hip hop is in direct defiance to evolution. There's always someone ready to tell you you're selling out if you move away from the immature and dangerous activities you used to do, you're selling out if you speak proper English, embrace education, dress like a grown man, do anything mainstream.

The Black KKK is enforcing the same crippling standards as its parent organization. It wants to keep black men in their place — uneducated, outside the mainstream and six feet deep.

In all likelihood, the Black Klan and its mentality buried Sean Taylor, and any black man or boy reading this could be next.

What 'FREE' means...

I use this blog to advise interested parties to evaluate, use, and exercise their own judgment on some products that will save them grief or money. The products all have usage agreements that must be honored. Schools must buy their own solutions tho I try to point them in the right direction.

You are not being "cheap" by using superior products that are open-source or created for the public good.

You are not being extravagant by buying something you like better.

My suggestions are the best I can offer today. And - surprise of surprises! - You are always responsible for your own choices.

Something I talked with neighbors about while campaigning was what many thought was the need for some courses that helped train students for...

Education Quotes:

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.""

- Isaac Asimov

"We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school." - from No Surrender

- Bruce Springsteen

"The truth is more important than the facts."

- Frank Lloyd Wright

”I can’t understand for the life of me what’s so great about being stupid”

- G.W. Bush

"In times of universal deceit, speaking the truth is a revolutionary act."

- George Orwell

"It's Freedom of Hearing that I worry about more."

-Tom Smothers (2008) discussing censorship

"When the Iron Curtain fell, all of the West rejoiced that the East would become just as free as the West. It was never supposed to be the other way around."

- Rick Falkvinge

"Education is a system of imposed ignorance."

-Noam Chomsky

"You're in a fishbowl so make use of it, man."

-John Lennon

"Heroism is just learning how to listen to your better angels." - Mort Sahl

"The only answer to organized money is organized people." - Bill Moyers

"If people insist on living as if there’s no tomorrow, there really won’t be one." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.